Thursday, March 31, 2016

Buhari, Tinubu And Anti-Kachikwu Hysteria

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Having crashed from the
dizzy heights of the grand dreams of prosperity and equity of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) government led by President Muhammadu Buhari, the
citizens who are desperately in search of succour are faced with the danger of
snatching whatever promises to ameliorate their plight. What is amply being
demonstrated now is that the citizens’ straitened circumstances could blur
their capacity to make a distinction between those who really love them and are
genuinely committed to their well-being and those who would gleefully turn
their blighted condition into a populist stunt to leverage their social and
political capital.

*Tinubu and President Buhari

The citizens who have
been left in the lurch by the APC government after winning the presidential
election may agree with Bola Tinubu that what Minister of State for Petroleum
Ibe Kachikwu owes Nigerians is a public apology and not smugly applauding
himself from an Olympian height for how much he has deployed his
ingenuity to supply the citizens fuel amid highly discouraging
odds. Yet, the citizens must take cognisance of the need to avoid being
corralled into a turf war that is not actually designed to benefit them. We
do not need to probe how much love of the people Tinubu demonstrated while
he was the governor of LagosState. What we observe now from his
position as a leader of the ruling party is enough for us. He was
instrumental to the emergence of Buhari as president. It was apparently to
avoid indicting himself that Tinubu would not like to blame Buhari for the
failure of his government. For Tinubu cannot really say that he found in Buhari
administrative genius that compelled him to recommend him to Nigerians as
the best presidential material last year. In this regard, we are
reminded of the attempts by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to divorce
himself from the crises sired by the inability of his successor Musa Yar’
Adua to govern effectively after being hobbled by an illness that he
never recovered from.

To be sure, the
nation’s fuel crisis is aggravated by the erratic supply of electricity. This
is a sector managed by Babatunde Fashola whom Tinubu
imposed on LagosState residents for eight
years. On account of Tinubu’s newfangled love for the well-being of the
citizens, he should have issued a statement bristling with rage at
Fashola’s abandonment of his responsibility of providing the
citizens improved electricity. Or does Tinubu not consider it revoltingly illogical for
Fashola to compel the citizens to pay more for electricity they
are not provided? Which should come first, the provision of meters for the
citizens or their paying more for electricity? Would the citizens not readily
pay their bills if they were metered and they were convinced that they were
paying for what they consumed?

*Ibe Kachikwu

In the face of the
gruelling fuel crisis, with the queues growing longer at those few filling
stations that have fuel and sell it at exorbitant prices, we may not be able to
defend Kachikwu. Yet, we must come to terms with the fact that the
inability of Kachikwu to deliver fuel to Nigerians is a reflection of the
ingrained incapacity of the Buhari government to meet the expectations of
the citizens. For Kachikwu’s floundering is part of the malaise of the Buhari
government. It was this blundering that made Buhari to sack
vice chancellors and the governing councils of universities. Now, there is the
cretinous excuse that he might have been advised to do this by his aides. But
by simply acting on such advice, the president only betrayed his middling
credentials for the job he sought from the citizens. For if the president were
not befuddled by his paranoia that the appointees of the previous
government would deliberately not allow him to succeed, he would
have taken into consideration the need to seek the opinions of other persons
concerning such a sensitive matter. What prevented Buhari from
asking around him if whimsically sacking vice chancellors and governing
councils is the best practice in the university system? Or does it mean
that the president just acts on biases and rumours? Did he seek the
advice of his deputy who is an accomplished professor of law? It was this same
bumbling that led to the maiden budget of the government being padded. And
despite all the pretensions to the zero-tolerance for corruption, with the
president declaring while he was in Saudi Arabia that heads would
roll over the scandal, nobody has been prosecuted over the development. All
Buhari could do was to sack the head of the budget office and redeploy
other officials. If these people were actually involved in the budget
padding why must their punishment be limited to only
sacking or redeploying them? Why should they not be duly
prosecuted and given appropriate sanctions ?

In the same vein,
Kachikwu may have the competence and all the good intentions in the world to
turn around the fortune of the oil sector. But he is probably being hamstrung
by Buhari himself who may not be availing himself of the expertise of Kachikwu
and may have rather chosen to be listening to the misbegotten advice
of ill-informed people to run his government. The
anti-Kachikwu forces may soon birth a rash of NGOs to push for his
removal. And for Buhari to continue to enjoy the approval of his sponsors, he
may sack him. But even if Kachikwu were removed as the group managing
director of the NNPC or as minister or both, his successor may not also perform
better. After all, Kachikwu’s successor can only work in conformity with
what Buhari who is his boss in double capacity – as senior minister and
president – wants done in the oil sector. Besides, Buhari is a former minister
of petroleum and head of state. So no one can claim that he just sits somewhere
and Kachikwu dumps on his table proposals which fail to work. Therefore,
instead of the Senate summoning Kachikwu, they should summon Buhari who
is the senior minister in the petroleum ministry and direct their questions to
him. Nigerians should hold Buhari responsible for being in the queue in the
scorching sun or freezing cold.

As long as Tinubu has
not disavowed this government, he should stop deploying populist stunts
that would make him look different from those who are afflicting Nigerians
with a brand of governance that is bereft of transformational energy.
Instead of stoking selective hysteria targeted at Kachikwu,
Tinubu should start the demonstration of his love for the
citizens by apologising to them for foisting an incompetent leader on them.

*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of
the The Guardian where he
also writes a weekly column that appears every Thursday